Friday, January 17, 2014

And here's an older page:
How subtle can language considerations really get!?
Perhaps the most obscure page on my site. (No, it's not really.)http://sandradodd.com/refresh

Important message to anyone who opens that page, or any page ever in your life:

If while you're reading you think "That's WORTHLESS!" then close the page, because to you it is worthless.
IF, while reading, you think that it's cool, or interesting, or it had never occurred to you, or you wish it had been longer, click some of the links, or google something up.

Each passageway can be an adventure, or you can turn and do something different.

(Leaving Hebrew poetry behind and zipping ahead a few thousand years,
down at the genius bar, "refresh" and "restore" mean very different things.)

Other obscure pages that mean nothing to some people, and much more to others:

Monday, January 13, 2014

Barbie is better for children than a mother's negative assessment of her own looks, or a child's.
New writing up top, quoting mothers with long experience with mothers and daughters:http://sandradodd.com/barbie

Karen James asked her son what, of everything in the grocery store, he would like her to bring home (just below the box):http://sandradodd.com/food

Sunday, January 12, 2014

My part is an edited transcript of a radio interview in which the topics were strewing and spirituality. (Here is access to the original sound file, and the chapter will be a longer version of this: "Living Unschooling".)

PRESS RELEASE
Book Launch
Natural Born Learners: Unschooling and Autonomy in Education

January 2014—Natural Born Learners: Unschooling and Autonomy in Education edited by Beatrice Ekwa Ekoko and Carlo Ricci.

We are pleased to announce that our reader is live.

Humans are natural learners. This collection of essays challenges much of mainstream beliefs about how people learn, encouraging the reader to consider deeply the need for learners to be trusted and listened to. Many of the authors in the book begin from a learner-centered, democratic perspective. Divided into three sections, the first part of the book deals with what constitutes a learner-centered approach to education. The second section addresses how some have implemented this approach. In the last section, learners who have lived learner-centred learning share narratives about their experiences.

Reviews

“For those who want to restore natural learning—whether for themselves, their children, or all of society—this book is a great resource. We can all learn here from contributors who have helped to explain how natural learning works, from those who have helped to make such learning more possible in today’s world, and from those lucky individuals who grew up learning naturally.”

- Peter Gray, Research Professor of Psychology at Boston College and Author of Free to Learn: Why Unleashing the Instinct to Play Will Make Our Children Happier, More Self- Reliant, and Better Students for Life.

“This book explores the roots of self-direction and offers a series of highly insightful and creative ways to help people be open, peaceful, natural learners. The roots of democratic living are fostered by what is said here. School administrators, teachers, parents, students, politicians and virtually all citizens will benefit from reading this. I most highly recommended this unusually fine and stimulating book.”
- Conrad Pritscher, Professor Emeritus, Bowling Green State University

Background:

Most of the pieces in this book are derived from interviews aired on the Radio Free School program that ran from 2002 to 2008 on 93.3 fm CFMU in Hamilton. It is divided into three sections:
1. What is unschooling/natural learning/self-determined learning;
2. What does it look like in practice, and;
3. The stories of those who unschooled and are now adults.

Beatrice Ekwa Ekoko is a free-lance writer and blogger. She blogs extensively at Natural Born Learners (radiofreeschool.blogspot.com) and has founded Personalized Education Hamilton to facilitate self-determined learning in her community. She works for a not-for-profit environmental organization as a project manager and coordinator. She lives in Hamilton, Ontario with her husband and three children who were all unschooled for a time.
Visit her website to see other writing at bekoko.ca.

Carlo Ricci is a professor of education and currently teaches in the Graduate Program at the Schulich School of Education, Nipissing University. He edits and founded the Journal of Unschooling and Alternative Learning. He has written and edited a number of books including The Willed Curriculum, Unschooling, and Self-Direction: What Do Love, Trust, Respect, Care, and Compassion Have to Do With Learning; and Turning points: 35 Visionaries in Education Tell Their Own Stories (AERO, 2010) with Jerry Mintz; and The Legacy of John Holt: A Man Who Genuinely Understood, Trusted, and Respected Children (HoltGWS, 2013) with Patrick Farenga. He has also written numerous articles on unschooling and self-determined learning. He lives in Toronto, Ontario with his wife and two children.